Dance of Death (32 page)

But would the jury buy into it?

When asked by Diggs what were those pressures, Albiniak explained, “When an interrogation purposely leaves out some element of the case, having evidence, having fingerprints, as to a psychologist, that would be coercive because it will create the tendency in the person's mind that, ‘Maybe, in fact, they do have evidence and maybe they are gonna find me guilty,' even if you may not be.”

In regard to Renee's case, Albiniak had studied the tapes and transcripts of her interviews extensively and concluded there were fifteen incidents that troubled him about police tactics. Diggs passed out transcripts to the jurors again and asked the professor to point them out, then elaborate.

Albiniak told the jury there were more incidents of police pressure and psychological coercion when Renee didn't have an attorney. He said they were milder, were fewer, and were more subtle in other circumstances. With the aid of the transcripts, he identified where the police had, through their statements, put Renee in a more vulnerable state of mind. He was convinced their status as a law officer, as an authority and especially a male made a huge difference.

“The fact that he's an authority figure,” Albiniak stated confidently, “the fact he's an older male makes a difference. He carries a certain degree of authority due to these characteristics. As a younger woman, she would be more vulnerable to cooperate. They gave her the impression they were gonna be truthful, and that's not the case. Law enforcement officers can lie legally and that's allowable under the law.”

Albiniak termed the tactics by the detectives as the “lifeguard phenomenon.” He then read and explained several of those from the transcript. For example, he chose Detective Altman's statement to Renee, “I'm right here tonight. If you want me to look at it as if we were lifeguards in a rowboat and we're throwing you out a life preserver.”

Several jurors raised their eyebrows.

Albiniak discussed Victor Leckowitz, Renee's lawyer, and how his questioning and interrogating during her interview was inappropriate. “Her attorney actually contributed to her dilemma. That she had lost her counsel and gained a third interrogator. It isolated her more, lost her support psychologically and legally.”

Nearly everyone in the courtroom, including the prosecution attorneys, truly agreed with him on that point.

Albiniak identified police statements in the transcripts that referred to Renee losing her daughter. He testified that tactic was very significant in getting her to become incredibly cooperative.

“Given that Renee had just lost her husband, ‘If I'm taken out of the picture, my daughter is left by herself,' that could be a devastating scenario for her young daughter. It would lead her to try all kinds of attempts to satisfy the authorities to keep her daughter. If she wanted to keep her daughter, she's got to figure out now, ‘What do I have to say in order to enable me to keep my daughter?' She's gonna attempt all kinds of, I think, exercises in order to gain that end result.”

It all made good sense to the jury.

“The fact that they were taking place late at night,” Albiniak continued. “Interrogations are done in a usually small, barren room, no distractions present. It's on police grounds. In other words, everything is done to make you as isolated as possible and as cooperative as possible, and from their point of view. I can understand that, from a psychological point of view, you can get all kinds of distorted information from that person because of that kind of situation, late at night. All those things play into that vulnerability.

“In the short term, you want out of that place. You'll do whatever you can sometimes to get out. There have been cases where people have admitted to crimes just to get out of the interrogation situation. They weren't as severe as this crime, but there were cases where people have acknowledged wrongdoing just to get out of the interrogation process because it is very unpleasant.

“Falsifications given by the detectives which led her to make statements that are not true. Deceptions, ploys of typical interrogation, subtle suggestions, misstatement of facts, police strategies and tactics, that can wreak havoc with a person who is under a lot of stress at the time they hear that statement.” All that would contribute ultimately to making what Albiniak described as the false confession.

“You've got to remember in this situation, this woman at least witnessed a murder. Most of us will never have to do that. [It's] very traumatizing. She is being interviewed within a week's time for that terrible event. Memory fails when people are under tremendous stress. Like Dr. Thrasher mentioned, she was probably suffering from PTSD at this time. You don't recall things accurately. Sometimes you say things that are inaccurate under those conditions. It's fairly common for that to happen.”

Albiniak cited those incidents that supported his theory.

“Some people are so vulnerable, that if you constantly insist that something is correct, which they know is not correct, they will eventually succumb and agree. [They] minimize the gravity of the situation so that you may agree with that statement; so if you minimize how serious the act is, the person may then agree with you, even if they know it not to be true. Blaming the accomplice and minimizing her direct involvement. To maneuver the person into a comfortable position where they're likely to make an admission that may or may not be true, but you have the admission.

“The whole point of any interrogation is to limit the respondent's ability to contradict their accusations. That's the whole point. You don't let the person make statements, you don't want them making those statements. You want to prevent them, you want to guide them gradually into making affirmative statements, and you can do that very slowly. But over the course of a four- or five-hour interrogation, you've got the person to the point where they're agreeing with a lot of statements they wouldn't have agreed with two hours ago. They've been gradually drawn in that direction. It's an artistic event.”

“And are those techniques developed by psychologists?” Diggs asked.

“To a degree,” Albiniak acknowledged. “But more police officers than psychologists. I think psychologists would tend to find this coercive, whereas law enforcement people might find them beneficial.”

Near the end of Albiniak's testimony, Diggs posed a disturbing scenario. “From a psychological standpoint, given the fact you've got a twenty-one-year-old mother who's just witnessed the murder of her husband, you've gone through the interrogation scenarios for two days . . . from the psychological standpoint, did Mrs. Poole have any other viable option at that point other than to agree with what Detective Altman was either telling her or demanding of her?”

Albiniak didn't hesitate to say, “I don't think so, not at the very end of this process. Early on, there was lots of resistance, which there always is, but near the end of the interview process, you run out of resources. You are fatigued; you're sleepy; you're distressed and you don't see many options. You tend, then, to say things that you wouldn't otherwise have said.”

Diggs wanted to be certain the jury understood what he was contending. “From a psychological standpoint, what would have been the consequences for Mrs. Poole to continue to assert her innocence?”

“She would have simply stayed in that unpleasant situation for days thereafter. There's no option. There's no out.... She will continue to be accused of the murder and possibly lose her daughter.... Those were the options that she perceived.”

“And were they acceptable options for most normal human beings?” Diggs asked.

“Not for her,” Albiniak assured the jurors.

It appeared to be a solid line of defense, but it was all smoke and mirrors to the prosecution. They asserted the defense had proved nothing with its theory that Renee had confessed to police there was a plan and she knew about it, because she was afraid she would lose her daughter—and the likelihood of police creating that scenario resulted in a false confession. Did they really believe she had confessed to what the police basically wanted to hear and falsely confessed to something she did not participate in? Did she admit to being a part of it, once police had “their foot in the door” generally, and agree to a much larger statement as they pushed her farther out? Did she admit to murder just to extricate herself from a situation that was unpleasant?

On cross, Fran Humphries would dispute that these issues may have been psychologically problematic, but they weren't
legal
ones. He started by getting Albiniak to admit he did not know Mrs. Poole, had not met with her and had not had the opportunity to perform psychological testing on her.

“So, you're left with hearing the words, reading the words, but not knowing the person,” he delivered the accusation. “And you would do much better to access her vulnerability, had you had the opportunity to test her psychologically and conduct a thorough interview?”

Albiniak agreed. He further acknowledged that two-thirds—as opposed to one-third—of those interviewed
get caught
in a false confession. And that when a person in Renee Poole's position has been arrested on a criminal offense, a heinous charge, that there was adamant denial at the beginning. That it was all part of a self-protection strategy.

Diggs attempted to strengthen his position on redirect when he asked Albiniak, “Is a false confession likely to be more quickly retracted than a genuine confession?” But his answer wasn't particularly to his liking when it came back, “Not typically. They'll be persistent usually; they'll be persistent.”

The evening was growing late, past the normal quitting time for the jury. Judge Cottingham gave them the option to retire or order sandwiches and keep on working. The jurors voted to keep on going.

The defense then called Mark Hobbs to the stand for the purpose of leading the jury through the ponytail scenario again. It made no sense to Hobbs, and even less sense when Diggs requested that one of the witnesses in the courtroom, Bruce Wolford, sit outside during his testimony. Hobbs didn't know anything about Wolford and had no way of knowing the person whom he now saw with a clean-shaven head and face had once sported a ponytail and sparse facial hair. Renee's supporters sitting in the gallery behind the defense table knew Bruce and were quick to say his new cue-ball look was a diversion to cast off any suspicions of him as the murderer.

When Mark Hobbs testified he was referring to a sweatshirt hood by alluding to the ponytail reference, Diggs went after him. What had made him change his statement now? Hobbs calmly told him he hadn't changed his statement. There was something behind the suspect's head, flopping when he was running, and it appeared to be a ponytail. But it was more than likely a hood on a jacket.

On cross-examination, Humphries had Hobbs confirm in the transcript the word “ponytail” was never used.

“No, sir,” Hobbs added. “It just says it's hard to tell about his hair.”

Hobbs's statement brought an avalanche of protests from the defense. For twenty minutes the debate continued about which was the correct transcript and if the taped interview with Hobbs had included the word “ponytail.” The judge proposed the only fair thing to do was to replay the tape. The defense accused the prosecution of switching transcripts, but, in the end, they lost.

Diggs collected his bearings then called Detective Terry Altman back to the stand for a lengthy discussion on the composite drawn of the suspect with information provided by Chris Hensley. The composite was entered by Diggs as defendant's exhibit number two and shown to the jury. When he attempted to question Altman as to where it had been proven that John Frazier still had the TZ-75 handgun in his possession, the judge dismissed the jury.

The question posed before the judge was whether or not Altman could testify as to what Kevin Todd Fain had told him about the transaction of the gun. The prosecution objected on the basis of hearsay, and the defense argued all they wanted Altman to do was testify to what was in his notes.

While the jury was out, Diggs questioned Altman concerning information from his notes. His line of questions asserted that the police were aware that Frazier no longer owned the TZ-75 and had sold it to someone he worked with around the winter of 1998.

The prosecution rose to their feet to let the cat out of the bag. “This may be a touch anticipatory,” Fran Humphries interjected, “but I know exactly where this is going and that's third-party guilt. He's gonna try and point out somebody else. In fact, he's gonna point out Bruce Wolford.”

“No, sir, we're not going into third-party guilt,” Cottingham declared strongly. Diggs intervened, saying he hadn't planned on going into that tonight. “Well, when you get ready to do that, let's excuse the jury before you do it, so I can make sure that you comply with the various rules,” the judge told him.